They were so kind as to excuse me at cards, and played by themselves; and I went by my master's commands and sat on the other side, in the happiest place I ever was blest with, between two of the dearest men in the world to me, and each holding one of my hands:—my father, every now and then, with tears, lifting up his eyes, and saying, Could I ever have hoped this!
— from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson

“So could I,” echoed his father, who was feeling rather in the cold.
— from Howards End by E. M. (Edward Morgan) Forster

When I in distant Kekaya stayed, And thou hadst sought the forest shade, Our father died, the saints' delight, So constant in each holy rite.
— from The Rámáyan of Válmíki, translated into English verse by Valmiki

She is the sweetest companion I ever had.
— from The Forged Note: A Romance of the Darker Races by Oscar Micheaux

"Since that Rosyth affair, I never travel without it," I replied, as I stood with my back to the cheap mantel-shelf so common in English hotels.
— from Once a Week by A. A. (Alan Alexander) Milne

In observance of this custom, an exclamation of irritability and astonishment, too violent to be worthy of record, was elicited one day, from a dignified and very distinguished-looking old gentleman, with a venerable head, such as Titian might have painted, and a high lofty forehead bearing the traces of deep thought and feeling, when, after having seated himself on his favorite arm chair at the United Service Club in Edinburgh, his eye rested with a look of kindling amazement on these few lines, in large consequential-looking type, on a leading column of the Courant. June 1829.
— from Modern Flirtations: A Novel by Catherine Sinclair

What your honourable father had done to him I know not, but I met him just coming from Berkeley Square, and all the charms he had lately invited around him had suddenly departed, he was a different man, and that day, in a fit, I suppose, of spleen, he quits London, and the next time I hear of him he is in Geneva: that noble Lord is one of the strangest creatures I ever had the honour to know.
— from The Mother's Recompense, Volume 1 A Sequel to Home Influence by Grace Aguilar

Even if there were no doubt that the percentage of such crimes in England had long continued the same, still that fact would prove nothing as to the uniform reproduction of crime, if it could be shown that the percentage had ever varied anywhere else—in France or Italy, for example, or in Dahomey.
— from Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics With Some of Their Applications by William Thomas Thornton

Why, this is the most scandalous conduct I ever heard of.
— from Elbow-Room: A Novel Without a Plot by Charles Heber Clark

“So can I!” exclaimed Hodge.
— from Frank Merriwell's Triumph; Or, The Disappearance of Felicia by Burt L. Standish